Is Bumblefoot known for technical wankery, though? I'm not as musically invested in his works as others here, so it'd be interesting to see what fans of his might say about this. I'm mostly interested in hearing how MP plays up that technical music wankery with this set of musicians. He's not really had an outlet for that kind of prog metal since DT, and the closest he's come has been some heavier moments with Neal Morse, but that's not really Neal's style over-all. Flying Colors was modern rock and pop with a foot in the prog puddle, while Transatlantic was the whole body in the symphonic prog pool, but MP hasn't really dipped his sticks into a full on prog metal project lately, so hearing about a 10-minute instrumental is amazing for me.
Granted, I've not listened to a lot of progressive metal, or wankery music for that matter, in recent years, since my tastes in music have softened a bit from the hard stuff (my favorite and most listened bands lately have been Big Big Train, The Tangent, Haken, Anathema, Neal Morse, and the occasional non-prog rock band like Zeppelin and Queen). I think I was just too burned out on that kind of music after awhile, and to be honest, it's probably partly DT's fault. In the year-plus since The Astonishing has come out, I could probably count the number of times I've listened to DT (any era of it) on my fingers and toes, but I feel like with SOA, I might be ready to hear this kind of music again.
-Marc.